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The Spinster Book
By Myrtle Reed
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1907
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
MYRTLE REED
* * * * *
Set up and electrotyped, September, 1901
Reprinted, November, 1901; April, 1902; August, 1902; April, 1903;
July, 1903; September, 1903; June, 1904; October, 1904; June, 1905;
September, 1905; March, 1906; September, 1906; November, 1906;
July, 1907.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
* * * * *
BY MYRTLE REED.
LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN.
LATER LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN.
THE SPINSTER BOOK.
LAVENDER AND OLD LACE.
PICKABACK SONGS.
THE SHADOW OF VICTORY.
THE MASTER'S VIOLIN.
THE BOOK OF CLEVER BEASTS.
AT THE SIGN OF THE JACK-O'-LANTERN.
A SPINNER IN THE SUN.
LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITERARY MEN.
* * * * *
Contents
PAGE
Notes on Men 3
Concerning Women 25
The Philosophy of Love 49
The Lost Art of Courtship 71
The Natural History of Proposals 93
Love Letters: Old and New 115
An Inquiry into Marriage 137
The Physiology of Vanity 161
Widowers and Widows 183
The Consolations of Spinsterhood 205
Notes on Men
[Illustration]
Notes on Men
[Sidenote: "The Proper Study"]
If "the proper study of mankind is man," it is also the chief delight of
woman. It is not surprising that men are conceited, since the thought of
the entire population is centred upon them.
Women are wont to consider man in general as a simple creation. It is
not until the individual comes into the field of the feminine telescope,
and his peculiarities are thrown into high relief, that he is seen and
judged at his true value.
When a girl once turns her attention from the species to the individual,
her parlour becomes a sort of psychological laboratory in which she
conducts various experiments; not, however, without the loss of friends.
For men are impatient of the spirit of inquiry in woman.
[Sidenote: The Phenomena of Affection]
How shall a girl acquire her knowledge of the phenomena of affection, if
men are not willing to be questioned upon the subject? What is more
natural than to seek wisdom from the man a girl has just refused to
marry? Why should she not ask if he has ever loved before, how long he
has loved her, if he were not surprised when he found it out, and how he
feels in her presence?
Yet a sensitive spinster is repeatedly astonished at finding her lover
transformed into a fiend, without other provocation than this. He
accuses her of being "a heartless coquette," of having "led him
on,"--whatever that may mean,--and he does not care to have her for his
sister, or even for his friend.
[Sidenote: Original Research]
Occasionally a charitable man will open his heart for the benefit of the
patient student. If he is of a scientific turn of mind, with a fondness
for original research, he may even take a melancholy pleasure in the
analysis.
Thus she learns that he thought he had loved, until he cared for her,
but in the light of the new passion he sees clearly that the others were
mere, idle flirtations. To her surprise, she also discovers that he has
loved her a long time but has never dared to speak of it before, and
that this feeling, compared with the others, is as wine unto water. In
her presence he is uplifted, exalted, and often afraid, for very love of
her.
Next to a proposal, the most interesting thing in the world to a woman
is this kind of analysis. If a man is clever at it, he may change a
decided refusal to a timid promise to "think about it." The man who
hesitates may be lost, but the woman who hesitates is surely won.
In the beginning, the student is often perplexed by the magnitude of the
task which lies before her. Later, she comes to know that men, like
cats, need only to be stroked in the right direction. The problem thus
becomes a question of direction, which is seldom as simple as it looks.
[Sidenote: The Personal Equation]
Yet men, as a class, are easier to understand than women, because they
are less emotional. It is emotion which complicates the personal
equation with radicals and quadratics, and life which proceeds upon
predestined lines soon becomes monotonous and loses its charm. The
involved _x_ in the equation continually postpones the definite result,
which may often be surmised, but never achieved.
Still, there is little doubt as to the proper method, for some of the
radicals must necessarily appear in the result. Man's conceit is his
social foundation and when the vulnerable spot is once found in the
armour of Achilles, the overthrow of the strenuous Greek is near at
hand.
There is nothing in the world as harmless and as utterly joyous as man's
conceit. The woman who will not pander to it is ungracious indeed.
Man's interest in himself is purely altruistic and springs from an
unselfish desire to please. He values physical symmetry because one's
first impression of him is apt to be favourable. Manly accomplishments
and evidences of good breeding are desirable for the same reason, and he
likes to think his way of doing things is the best, regardless of actual
effectiveness.
[Sidenote: Pencils]
For instance, there seems to be no good reason why a man's way of
sharpening a pencil is any better than a woman's. It is difficult to see
just why it is advisable to cover the thumb with powdered graphite, and
expose that useful member to possible amputation by a knife directed
uncompromisingly toward it, when the pencil might be pointed the other
way, the risk of amputation avoided, and the shavings and pulverised
graphite left safely to the action of gravitation and centrifugal force.
Yet the entire race of men refuse to see the true value of the feminine
method, and, indeed, any man would rather sharpen any woman's pencil
than see her do it herself.
[Sidenote: The "Supreme Conceit"]
It pleases a man very much to be told that he "knows the world," even
though his acquaintance be limited to the flesh and the devil--a
gentleman, by the way, who is much misunderstood and whose faults are
persistently exaggerated. But man's supreme conceit is in regard to his
personal appearance. Let a single entry in a laboratory note-book
suffice for proof.
_Time, evening. MAN is reading a story in a current magazine to the GIRL
he is calling upon._
MAN. "Are you interested in this?"
GIRL. "Certainly, but I can think of other things too, can't I?"
MAN. "That depends on the 'other things.' What are they?"
GIRL. (_Calmly._) "I was just thinking that you are an extremely
handsome man, but of course you know that."
MAN. (_Crimsoning to his temples._) "You flatter me!" (_Resumes
reading._)
Girl. (_Awaits developments._)
MAN. (_After a little._) "I didn't know you thought I was good-looking."
GIRL. (_Demurely._) "Didn't you?"
MAN. (_Clears his throat and continues the story._)
MAN. (_After a few minutes._) "Did you ever hear anybody else say that?"
GIRL. "Say what?"
MAN. "Why, that I was--that I was--well, good-looking, you know?"
GIRL. "Oh, yes! Lots of people!"
MAN. (_After reading half a page._) "I don't think this is so very
interesting, do you?"
GIRL. "No, it isn't. It doesn't carry out the promise of its beginning."
MAN. (_Closes magazine and wanders aimlessly toward the mirror in the
mantel._)
MAN. "Which way do you like my hair; this way, or parted in the middle?"
GIRL. "I don't know--this way, I guess. I've never seen it parted in the
middle."
MAN. (_Taking out pocket comb and rapidly parting his hair in the
middle._) "There! Which way do you like it?"
GIRL. (_Judicially._) "I don't know. It's really a very hard question to
decide."
MAN. (_Reminiscently._) "I've gone off my looks a good deal lately. I
used to be a lot better looking than I am now."
GIRL. (_Softly._) "I'm glad I didn't know you then."
MAN. (_In apparent astonishment._) "Why?"
GIRL. "Because I might not have been heart whole, as I am now."
(_Long silence._)
MAN. (_With sudden enthusiasm._) "I'll tell you, though, I really do
look well in evening dress."
GIRL. "I haven't a doubt of it, even though I've never seen you wear
it."
MAN. (_After brief meditation._) "Let's go and hear Melba next week,
will you? I meant to ask you when I first came in, but we got to
reading."
GIRL. "I shall be charmed."
_Next day, GIRL gets a box of chocolates and a dozen American
Beauties--in February at that._
[Sidenote: Dimples and Dress Clothes]
Tell a man he has a dimple and he will say "where?" in pleased surprise,
meanwhile putting his finger straight into it. He has studied that
dimple in the mirror too many times to be unmindful of its geography.
Let the woman dearest to a man say, tenderly: "You were so handsome
to-night, dear--I was proud of you." See his face light up with noble,
unselfish joy, because he has given such pleasure to others!
All the married men at evening receptions have gone because they "look
so well in evening dress," and because "so few men can wear dress
clothes really well." In truth, it does require distinction and grace of
bearing, if a man would not be mistaken for a waiter.
Man's conceit is not love of himself but of his fellow-men. The man who
is in love with himself need not fear that any woman will ever become a
serious rival. Not unfrequently, when a man asks a woman to marry him,
he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by
her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft
becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a
sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny is the coral reef.
[Sidenote: Palmistry]
Palmistry does very well for a beginning if a man is inclined to be shy.
It leads by gentle and almost imperceptible degrees to that most
interesting of all subjects, himself, and to that tactful comment,
dearest of all to the masculine heart; "You are not like other men!"
A man will spend an entire evening, utterly oblivious of the lapse of
time, while a woman subjects him to careful analysis. But sympathy,
rather than sarcasm, must be her guide--if she wants him to come again.
A man will make a comrade of the woman who stimulates him to higher
achievement, but he will love the one who makes herself a mirror for his
conceit.
Men claim that women cannot keep a secret, but it is a common failing. A
man will always tell some one person the thing which is told him in
confidence. If he is married, he tells his wife. Then the exclusive bit
of news is rapidly syndicated, and by gentle degrees, the secret is
diffused through the community. This is the most pathetic thing in
matrimony--the regularity with which husbands relate the irregularities
of their friends. Very little of the world's woe is caused by silence,
however it may be in fiction and the drama.
[Sidenote: Exchange of Confidence]
In return for the generous confidence regarding other people's doings,
the married man is made conversant with those things which his wife
deems it right and proper for him to know. And he is not unhappy, for it
isn't what he doesn't know that troubles a man, but what he knows he
doesn't know.
The masculine nature is less capable of concealment than the feminine.
Where men are frankly selfish, women are secretly so. Man's vices are
few and comprehensive; woman's petty and innumerable. Any man who is not
in the penitentiary has at most but three or four, while a woman will
hide a dozen under her social mask and defy detection.
Women are said to be fickle, but are they more so than men? A man's
ideal is as variable as the wind. What he thinks is his ideal of woman
is usually a glorified image of the last girl he happened to admire. The
man who has had a decided preference for blondes all his life, finally
installs a brown-eyed deity at his hearthstone. If he has been fond of
petite and coquettish damsels, he marries some Diana moulded on large
lines and unconcerned as to mice.
A man will ride, row, and swim with one girl and marry another who is
afraid of horses, turns pale at the mention of a boat, and who would
look forward to an interview with His Satanic Majesty with more ease and
confidence than to a dip in the summer sea.
[Sidenote: Portia and Carmen]
Theoretically, men admire "reasonable women," with the uncommon quality
which is called "common sense," but it is the woman of caprice, the
sweet, illogical despot of a thousand moods, who is most often and most
tenderly loved. Man is by nature a discoverer. It is not beauty which
holds him, but rather mystery and charm. To see the one woman through
all the changing moods--to discern Portia through Carmen's witchery--is
the thing above all others which captivates a man.
[Sidenote: The Dorcas Ideal]
Deep in his heart, man cherishes the Dorcas ideal. The old, lingering
notions of womanliness are not quite dispelled, but in this, as in
other things, nothing sickens a man of his pet theory like seeing it in
operation.
It may be a charming sight to behold a girl stirring cheese in the
chafing-dish, wearing an air of deep concern when it "bunnies" at the
sides and requires still more skill. It may also be attractive to see
white fingers weave wonders with fine linen and delicate silks, with
pretty eagerness as to shade and stitch.
But in the after-years, when his divinity, redolent of the kitchen,
meets him at the door, with hair dishevelled and fingers bandaged, it is
subtly different from the chafing-dish days, and the crisp chops,
generously black with charcoal, are not as good as her rarebits used to
be. The memory of the silk and fine linen also fades somewhat, in the
presence of darning which contains hard lumps and patches which
immediately come off.
It has become the fashion to speak of woman as the eager hunter, and man
as the timid, reluctant prey. The comic papers may have started it, but
modern society certainly lends colour to the pretty theory. It is
frequently attributed to Mr. Darwin, but he is at times unjustly blamed
by those who do not read his pleasing works.
The complexities in man's personal equation are caused by variants of
three emotions; a mutable fondness for women, according to temperament
and opportunity, a more uniform feeling toward money, and the universal,
devastating desire--the old, old passion for food.
[Sidenote: The Key of Happiness]
The first variant is but partially under the control of any particular
woman, and the less she concerns herself with the second, the better it
is for both, but she who stimulates and satisfies the third variant
holds in her hands the golden key of happiness. No woman need envy the
Sphinx her wisdom if she has learned the uses of silence and never asks
a favour of a hungry man.
A woman makes her chief mistake when she judges a man by herself and
attributes to him indirection and complexity of motive. When she wishes
to attract a particular man, she goes at it indirectly. She makes
friends of "his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts," and assumes an
interest in his chum. She ignores him at first and thus arouses his
curiosity. Later, she condescends to smile upon him and he is mildly
pleased, because he thinks he has been working for that very smile and
has finally won it. In this manner he is lured toward the net.
[Sidenote: The Wise Virgin]
When a girl systematically and effectively feeds a man, she is leading
trumps. He insensibly associates her with his comfort and thus she
becomes his necessity. When a man seeks a woman's society it is because
he has need of her, not because he thinks she has need of him; and the
parlour of the girl who realises it, is the envy of every unattached
damsel on the street. If the wise one is an expert with the
chafing-dish, she may frequently bag desirable game, while the foolish
virgins who have no alcohol in their lamps are hunting eagerly for the
trail.
Because she herself works indirectly, she thinks he intends a tender
look at another girl for a carom shot, and frequently a far-sighted
maiden can see the evidences of a consuming passion for herself in a
man's devotion to someone else.
Men are not sufficiently diplomatic to bother with finesse of this kind.
Other things being equal, a man goes to see the girl he wants to see.
It does not often occur to her that he may not want to see her, may be
interested in someone else, or that he may have forgotten all about her.
[Sidenote: "Encouragement"]
There is a common feminine delusion to the effect that men need
"encouragement" and there is no term which is more misused. A fool may
need "encouragement," but the man who wants a girl will go after her,
regardless of obstacles. As for him, if he is fed at her house, even
irregularly, he may know that she looks with favour upon his suit.
[Sidenote: "Platonic Friendship"]
The parents of both, the neighbours, and even the girl herself, usually
know that a man is in love before he finds it out. Sometimes he has to
be told. He has approached a stage of acute and immediate peril when he
recognises what he calls "a platonic friendship."
Young men believe platonic friendship possible; old men know better--but
when one man learns to profit by the experience of another, we may look
for mosquitoes at Christmas and holly in June.
There is an exquisite danger attached to friendships of this kind, and
is it not danger, rather than variety, which is "the spice of life?"
Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the
disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they
spend whole days in the country with book and wheel.
A book is a mysterious bond of union, and by their taste in books do a
man and woman unerringly know each other. Two people who unite in
admiration of Browning are apt to admire each other, and those who
habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world more
kindly if they face it hand in hand.
A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced
by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have
only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your
favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to
leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory
initial, for you to know your fate."
[Sidenote: The High-Priest]
A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for
him to love. Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud
and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely bound
that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those
whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it
sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous
measure of content.
The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or
else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled
reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding,
indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the
logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.
In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the
blame, and often has to bear his creator's vituperation in addition to
his other troubles. When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows
clearly that it is the woman's fault. When the situation is presented
outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in
the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage to
claim the entire credit for the mutual content.
[Sidenote: Pursuit and Possession]
Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and
refreshing accord, that "it is pursuit and not possession with a man."
True--but is it less true with women?
When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has
long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements? Does
she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with
tempting dishes and unusual smiles? Not unless she wants something else.
Still, it is woman's tendency to make the best of what she has, and
man's to reach out for what he has not. Man spends his life in the
effort to realise the ideals which, like will-o'-the-wisps, hover just
beyond him. Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she
may, by idealising her reals.
In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own
possible perfection. Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all
the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned. Other
men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease--and they are
usually a certain specific.
But, after all, men are as women make them. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy
swayed empires and rocked thrones. There is no woman who does not hold
within her little hands some man's achievement, some man's future, and
his belief in woman and God.
She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or
make him a coward and a thief. She may show him the way to the gold of
the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep. It is she who
leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic purpose,
that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.
[Sidenote: The Potter's Hand]
Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair. Through the long
night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic making
victory of defeat. It is for her to say whether his face shall be
world-scarred and weary, hiding tragedy behind its piteous lines;
whether there shall be light or darkness in his soul. He cannot escape
those soft, compelling fingers; she is the arbiter of his destiny--for
like clay in the potter's hands, she moulds him as she will.
Concerning Women
[Illustration]
Concerning Women
In order to be happy, a woman needs only a good digestion, a
satisfactory complexion, and a lover. The first requirement being met,
the second is not difficult to obtain, and the third follows as a matter
of course.
[Sidenote: Nagging]
He was a wise philosopher who first considered crime as disease, for
women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the scold
are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not
allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?
A well woman is usually a happy one, and incidentally, those around her
share her content. The irritation produced by fifteen minutes of nagging
speaks volumes for the personal influence which might be directed the
other way, and the desired result more easily obtained.
[Sidenote: Diversions]
The sun around which woman revolves is Love. Her whole life is spent in
search of it, consciously or unconsciously. Incidental diversions in
the way of "career" and "independence" are usually caused by domestic
unhappiness, or, in the case of spinsters, the fear of it.
If all men were lovers, there would be no "new woman" movement, no
sociological studies of "Woman in Business," no ponderous analyses of
"The Industrial Condition of Women" in weighty journals. Still more than
a man, a woman needs a home, though it be but the tiniest room.
Even the self-reliant woman of affairs who battles bravely by day in the
commercial arena has her little nook, made dainty by feminine touches,
to which she gladly creeps at night. Would it not be sweeter if it were
shared by one who would always love her? As truly as she needs her bread
and meat, woman needs love, and, did he but know it, man needs it too,
though in lesser degree.
[Sidenote: The Verity and the Vision]
Lacking the daily expression of it which is the sweet unction of her
hungry soul, she seeks solace in an ideal world of her own making. It is
because the verity jars upon her vision that she takes a melancholy view
of life.
One of woman's keenest pleasures is sorrow. Her tears are not all pain.
She goes to the theatre, not to laugh, but to weep. The clever
playwright who closes his last scene with a bitter parting is sure of a
large clientage, composed almost wholly of women. Sad books are written
by men, with an eye to women readers, and women dearly love to wear the
willow in print.
Women are unconscious queens of tragedy. Each one, in thought, plays to
a sympathetic but invisible audience. She lifts her daily living to a
plane of art, finding in fiction, music, pictures, and the stage
continual reminders of her own experience.
Does her husband, distraught with business cares, leave her hurriedly
and without the customary morning kiss? Woman, on her way to market,
rapidly reviews similar instances in fiction, in which this first
forgetting proved to be "the little rift within the lute."
The pictures of distracted ladies, wild as to hair and vision, are sold
in photogravure by countless thousands--to women. An attraction on the
boards which is rumoured to be "so sad," leads woman to economise in
the matter of roasts and desserts that she may go and enjoy an
afternoon of misery. Girls suffer all their lives long from being taken
to mirthful plays, or to vaudeville, which is unmixed delight to a man
and intolerably cheerful to a woman.
[Sidenote: Woman and Death]
Woman and Death are close friends in art. Opera is her greatest joy,
because a great many people are slaughtered in the course of a single
performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba
sings the mad scene from _Lucia_, and that beautiful voice descends by
lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and
prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands
of their companions in an ecstasy of pain.
In proportion as women enjoy sorrow, men shrink from it. A man cannot
bear to be continually reminded of the woman he has loved and lost,
while woman's dearest keepsakes are old love letters and the shoes of a
little child. If the lover or the child is dead, the treasures are never
to be duplicated or replaced, but if the pristine owner of the shoes has
grown to stalwart manhood and the writer of the love letters is a
tender and devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is merely mitigated.
It is not by any means lost.
[Sidenote: "The Eternal Womanly"]
Just why it should be considered sad to marry one's lover and for a
child to grow up, can never be understood by men. There are many things
in the "eternal womanly" which men understand about as well as a kitten
does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries become simple enough when
the leading fact is grasped--that woman's song of life is written in a
minor key and that she actually enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still,
the average woman wishes to be idealised and strongly objects to being
understood.
[Sidenote: "Tears, Idle Tears"]
Woman's tears mean no more than the sparks from an overcharged dynamo;
they are simply emotional relief. Married men gradually come to realise
it, and this is why a suspicion of tears in his sweetheart's eyes means
infinitely more to a lover than a fit of hysterics does to a husband.
We are wont to speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness
like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or
troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial
moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more
auspicious time, has in his hands the talisman of domestic felicity.
If by any chance the lachrymal glands were to be dried up, woman's life
would lose a goodly share of its charm. There is nothing to cry on which
compares with a man's shoulder; almost any man will do at a critical
moment; but the clavicle of a lover is by far the most desirable. If the
flood is copious and a collar or an immaculate shirt-front can be
spoiled, the scene acquires new and distinct value. A pillow does very
well, lacking the shoulder, for many of the most attractive women in
fiction habitually cry into pillows--because they have no lover, or
because the brute dislikes tears.
When grief strikes deep, a woman's eyes are dry. Her soul shudders and
there is a hand upon her heart whose icy fingers clutch at the inward
fibre in a very real physical pain. There are no tears for times like
these; the inner depths, bare and quivering, are healed by no such balm
as this.
A sudden blow leaves a woman as cold as a marble statue and absolutely
dumb as to the thing which lies upon her heart. When the tears begin to
flow, it means that resignation and content will surely come. On the
contrary, when once or twice in a lifetime a man is moved to tears,
there is nothing so terrible and so hopeless as his sobbing grief.
Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry
for each other. It never occurs to a married woman that a spinster may
not care to take the troublous step. An ideal lover in one's heart is
less strain upon the imagination than the transfiguration of a man who
goes around in his shirt-sleeves and dispenses with his collar at ninety
degrees Fahrenheit.
[Sidenote: The Unknown Country]
If fiction dealt pleasantly with men who are unmindful of small
courtesies, the unknown country beyond the altar would lose some of its
fear. If the way of an engaged girl lies past a barber shop,--which very
seldom has a curtain, by the way,--and she happens to think that she may
some day behold her beloved in the dangerous act of shaving himself, it
immediately hardens her heart. One glimpse of one face covered with
lather will postpone one wedding-day five weeks. Many a lover has
attributed to caprice or coquetry the fault which lies at the door of
the "tonsorial parlour."
[Sidenote: Other Feminine Eyes]
A woman may be a mystery to a man and to herself, but never to another
woman. There is no concealment which is effectual when other feminine
eyes are fixed upon one's small and harmless schemes. A glance at a
girl's dressing-table is sufficient for the intimate friend--she does
not need to ask questions; and indeed, there are few situations in life
in which the necessity for direct questions is not a confession of
individual weakness.
If fourteen different kinds of creams and emollients are within easy
reach, the girl has an admirer who is fond of out-door sports and has
not yet declared himself. If the curling iron is kept hot, it is because
he has looked approval when her hair was waved. If there is a box of
rouge but half concealed, the girl thinks the man is a fatuous idiot and
hourly expects a proposal.
If the various drugs are in the dental line, the man is a cheerful soul
with a tendency to be humorous. If she is particular as to small
details of scolding locks and eyebrows, he probably wears glasses. If
she devotes unusual attention to her nails, the affair has progressed to
that interesting stage where he may hold her hand for a few minutes at a
time.
If she selects her handkerchief with extreme care,--one with an initial
and a faint odour of violet--she expects to give it to him to carry and
to forget to ask for it. If he makes an extra call in order to return
it, it indicates a lesser degree of interest than if he says nothing
about it. The forgotten handkerchief is an important straw with a girl
when love's capricious wind blows her way.
It is not entirely without reason that womankind in general blames "the
other woman" for defection of any kind. Short-sighted woman thinks it a
mighty tribute to her own charm to secure the passing interest of
another's rightful property. It does not seem to occur to her that
someone else will lure him away from her with even more ease. Each
successive luring makes defection simpler for a man. Practice tends
towards perfection in most things; perhaps it is the single exception,
love, which proves the rule.
Three delusions among women are widespread and painful. Marriage is
currently supposed to reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for
life, and, if "the other woman" were only out of the way, he would come
back. Love sometimes reforms a man, but marriage does not. The rejected
lover suffers for a brief period,--feminine philosophers variously
estimate it, but a week is a generous average,--and he who will not come
in spite of "the other woman" is not worth having at all.
[Sidenote: "Not Things, but Men"]
Emerson says: "The things which are really for thee gravitate to thee."
One is tempted to add the World's Congress motto--"Not things, but men."
There is no virtue in women which men cultivate so assiduously as
forgiveness. They make one think that it is very pretty and charming to
forgive. It is not hygienic, however, for the woman who forgives easily
has a great deal of it to do. When pardon is to be had for the asking,
there are frequent causes for its giving. This, of course, applies to
the interesting period before marriage.
[Sidenote: Post-Nuptial Sins]
Post-nuptial sins are atoned for with gifts; not more than once in a
whole marriage with the simple, manly words, "Forgive me, dear, I was
wrong." It injures a man's conceit vitally to admit he has made a
mistake. This is gracious and knightly in the lover, but a married man,
the head of a family, must be careful to maintain his position.
Cases of reformation by marriage are few and far between, and men more
often die of wounded conceit than broken hearts. "Men have died and
worms have eaten them, but not for love," save on the stage and in the
stories women cry over.
[Sidenote: "The Other Woman"]
"The other woman" is the chief bugbear of life. On desert islands and in
a very few delightful books, her baneful presence is not. The girl a man
loves with all his heart can see a long line of ghostly ancestors, and
requires no opera-glass to discern through the mists of the future a
procession of possible posterity. It is for this reason that men's ears
are tried with the eternal, unchanging: "Am I the only woman you ever
loved?" and "Will you always love me?"
The woman who finally acquires legal possession of a man is haunted by
the shadowy predecessors. If he is unwary enough to let her know another
girl has refused him, she develops a violent hatred for this inoffensive
maiden. Is it because the cruel creature has given pain to her lord? His
gods are not her gods--if he has adored another woman.
These two are mutually "other women," and the second one has the best of
it, for there is no thorn in feminine flesh like the rejected lover who
finds consolation elsewhere. It may be exceedingly pleasant to be a
man's first love, but she is wise beyond books who chooses to be his
last, and it is foolish to spend mental effort upon old flames, rather
than in watching for new ones, for Cæsar himself is not more utterly
dead than a man's dead love.
Women are commonly supposed to worry about their age, but Father Time is
a trouble to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it absurd for women to
be concerned about the matter, but the hour eventually comes when she
regards the subject with reverence akin to awe. There is only one terror
in it--the dreadful nines.
[Sidenote: Scylla and Charybdis]
"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well be thirty? There is little choice
between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for
every woman, married, engaged, or unattached.
The married woman felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of
nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe--she
rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table
linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest
in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister
of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not
detract from woman's charm in the eyes of the faculty.
Men do not often know their ages accurately till after thirty. The
gladsome heyday of youth takes no note of the annual milestones. But
after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one,
but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over twenty-nine." Scylla and
Charybdis again!
[Sidenote: Perennial Youth]
Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women
are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron of fifty seems
to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose,
as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose
soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her
no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed,
self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and
found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her
glove is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her
new photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.
In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If
she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not
buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her
books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in
college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond
remembrance. But there are others, always the others--and is it less
sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a
Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty
men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.
[Sidenote: Three Weapons]
Woman has three weapons--flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the
last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to
man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie
at the end of the oesophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and
with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures
of the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and
kindred ills.
Besides, may she not always be a chaperone? When a political orator
refers effectively to "the cancer which is eating at the heart of the
body politic," someway, it always makes a girl think of a chaperone. She
goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air to whatever proceedings may be
in view. She is to keep the man from making love to the girl. Whispers
and tender hand clasps are occasionally possible, however, for, tell it
not in Gath! the chaperone was once young herself and at times looks the
other way.
That is, unless she is the girl's mother. Trust a parent for keeping two
eyes and a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking mother
for four new eyes under her back hair and a double row of ears arranged
laterally along her anxious spine! And yet, if the estimable lady had
not been married herself, it is altogether likely that the girl would
never have thought of it.
[Sidenote: The Chaperone]
The reason usually given for chaperonage is that it gives the girl a
chance to become acquainted with the man. Of course, in the presence of
a chaperone, a man says and does exactly the same things he would if he
were alone with the maiden of his choice. He does not mind making love
to a girl in her mother's presence. He does not even care to be alone
with her when he proposes to her. He would like to have some chaperone
read his letters--he always writes with this intention. At any time
during the latter part of the month it fills him with delight to see the
chaperone order a lobster after they have all had oysters.
Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society say, frankly: "This
chaperone business is just a little game. Our husbands are either at
the club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone,
and it is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our
daughters and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to
spare. Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and
neglect!" It is the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She
takes the girl along to escape gossip.
[Sidenote: Behold his House!]
It is strange, when it is woman's avowed object to make man happy, that
she insists upon doing it in her own way, rather than in his. He likes
the rich, warm colours; the deep reds and dark greens. Behold his house!
Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape with delicate tracery, and he
realises what it might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose and Nile
green appear in his drawing-room. Chippendale chairs, upon which he
fears to sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose it can get. See
the sofa cushions, which he has learned by bitter experience never to
touch! Does he rouse a quiescent Nemesis by laying his weary head upon
that elaborate embroidery? Not unless his memory is poor.
[Sidenote: Home Comforts]
Take careful note of the bric-à-brac upon his library table. See the few
square inches of blotting paper on a cylinder which he can roll over his
letter--the three stamps stuck together more closely than brothers,
generously set aside for his use. Does he find comfort here? Not very
much of it.
See the dainty dinner which is set before the hungry man. A cup of
rarest china holds four ounces of clear broth. A stick of bread or two
crackers are allotted to him. Then he may have two croquettes, or one
small chop, when his soul is athirst for rare roast beef and steak an
inch thick. Then a nice salad, made of three lettuce leaves and a
suspicion of oil, another cracker and a cubic inch of cheese, an ounce
of coffee in a miniature cup, and behold, the man is fed!
Why should he go to his club, call loudly for flesh-pots, sink into a
chair he is not afraid of breaking, and forget his trouble in the
evening paper, while his wife is at home, alone, or having a Roman
holiday as a chaperone?
It is a simple thing to acquire a lover, but it is a fine art to keep
him. Clubs were originally intended for the homeless, as distinguished
from the unmarried. The rare woman who rests and soothes a man when he
is tired has no rival in the club. Misunderstanding, sorrowful, yearning
for what she has lost, woman contemplates the wreck of her girlish
dream.
[Sidenote: The Heart of a Woman]
There are three things man is destined never to solve--perpetual motion,
the square of the circle, and the heart of a woman. Yet he may go a
little way into the labyrinth with the thread of love, which his Ariadne
will gladly give him at the door.
The dim chambers are fragrant with precious things, for through the
winding passages Memory has strewn rue and lavender, love and longing;
sweet spikenard and instinctive belief. Some day, when the heart aches,
she will brew content from these.
There are barriers which he may not pass, secret treasures that he may
not see, dreams that he may not guess. There are dark corners where
there has been torture, of which he will never know. There are shadows
and ghostly shapes which Penelope has hidden with the fairest fabrics of
her loom. There are doors, tightly locked, which he has no key to open;
rooms which have contained costly vessels, empty and deep with dust.
There is no other step than his, for he walks there alone; sometimes to
the music of dead days and sometimes to the laughter of a little child.
The petals of crushed roses rustle at his feet--his roses--in the inmost
places of her heart. And beyond, of spotless marble, with the infinite
calm of mountains and perpetual snow, is something which he seldom
comprehends--her love of her own whiteness.
It is a wondrous thing. For it is so small he could hold it in the
hollow of his hand, yet it is great enough to shelter him forever. All
the world may not break it if his love is steadfast and unchanging, and
loving him, it becomes deep enough to love and pity all the world.
It is a tender thing. So often is it wounded that it cannot see another
suffer, and its own pain is easier far to bear. It makes a shield of its
very tenderness, gladly receiving the stabs that were meant for him,
forgiving always, and forgetting when it may.
[Sidenote: The Solace]
Yet, after all, it is a simple thing. For in times of deepest doubt and
trouble, it requires for its solace only the tender look, the whispered
word which brings new courage, and the old-time grace of the lover's
way.
The Philosophy of Love
[Illustration]
The Philosophy of Love
[Sidenote: The Prevailing Theme]
A modern novelist has greatly lamented because the prevailing theme of
fiction is love. Every story is a love story, every romance finds its
inspiration in the heart, and even the musty tomes of history are beset
by the little blind god.
One or two men have dared to write books from which women have been
excluded as rigorously as from the Chinese stage, but the world of
readers has not loudly clamoured for more of the same sort. A story of
adventure loses none of its interest if there is some fair damsel to be
rescued from various thrilling situations.
The realists contend that a single isolated fact should not be dwelt
upon to the exclusion of all other interests, that love plays but a
small part in the life of the average man or woman, and that it is
unreasonable to expand it to the uttermost limits of art.
Strangely enough, the realists are all men. If a woman ventures to write
a book which may fitly be classed under the head of realism, the critics
charitably unite upon insanity as the cause of it and lament the lost
womanliness of a decadent generation.
If realism were actually real, we should have no time for books and
pictures. Our days and nights would be spent in reclaiming the people in
the slums. There would be a visible increase in the church fair--where
we spend more than we can afford for things we do not want, in order to
please people whom we do not like, and to help heathen who are happier
than we are.
[Sidenote: The Root of all Good]
The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, but love itself is
the root of all good, for it is the very foundation of the social
structure. The universal race for the elusive shilling, which is
commonly considered selfish, is based upon love.
Money will buy fine houses, but who would wish to live in a mansion
alone! Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus,
are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels
and costly raiment is the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to
others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister or
the desert.
The envy which luxury sometimes creates is also altruistic in character,
for in its last analysis, it is the wish to give pleasure to others, in
the same degree, as the envied fortunately may. Nothing is happiness
which is not shared by at least one other, and nothing is truly sorrow
unless it is borne absolutely alone.
[Sidenote: Love]
Love! The delight and the torment of the world! The despair of
philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics,
and the warrior's defeat!
Love! The bread and the wine of life, the hunger and the thirst, the
hurt and the healing, the only wound which is cured by another! The
guest who comes like a thief in the night! The eternal question which is
its own answer, the thing which has no beginning and no end!
The very blindness of it is divine, for it sees no imperfections, takes
no reck of faults, and concerns itself only with the hidden beauty of
the soul.
It is unselfishness--yet it tolerates no rival and demands all for
itself. It is belief--and yet it doubts. It is hope and it is also
misgiving. It is trust and distrust, the strongest temptation and the
power to withstand it; woman's need and man's dream. It is his enemy and
his best friend, her weakness and her strength; the roses and the
thorns.
Woman's love affairs begin in her infancy, with some childish play at
sweethearts, and a cavalier in dresses for her hero. It may be a matter
of affinity in later years, or, as the more prosaic Buckle suggests,
dependent upon the price of corn, but at first it is certainly a
question of propinquity.
Through the kindergarten and the multiplication table, the pretty game
goes on. Before she is thirteen, she decides to marry, and selects an
awkward boy a little older for the happy man. She cherishes him in her
secret heart, and it does not matter in the least if she does not know
him well enough to speak to him, for the good fairies who preside over
earthly destinies will undoubtedly lead The Prince to become formally
acquainted at the proper time.
[Sidenote: The Self-Conscious Period]
Later, the self-conscious period approaches and Mademoiselle becomes
solicitous as to ribbons and personal adornment. She pleads earnestly
for long gowns, and the first one is never satisfying unless it drags.
If she can do her hair in a twist "just like mamma's," and see the
adored one pass the house, while she sits at the window with sewing or
book, she feels actually "grown up."